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Sara Goldrick-Rab Will Leave Wisconsin for Temple

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Sara Goldrick-Rab announced online Monday night that she is leaving the University of Wisconsin at Madison for Temple University. Goldrick-Rab is a prominent researcher on low-income students and public policy and she has been among the more outspoken critics of the removal of tenure protections from statute in Wisconsin. While the University of Wisconsin System has been moving to put tenure policies into system policy, Goldrick-Rab has argued that those policies are not true tenure.

"It is no longer possible for critical scholars working in public higher education to flourish without tenure protections," she wrote online. "There are daily attacks on the ideas of scholars who challenge current practices and policies employed by university administrators, state legislators and even governors. McCarthyism is alive and well -- especially here in Wisconsin."

She added: "Terrified sheep make lousy teachers, lousy scholars and lousy colleagues. And today at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thanks to #FakeTenure, I’m surrounded by terrified sheep. To be honest, commitments to the growing number of people whom I am responsible for (including my two children, but also my students and staff), put me at risk of becoming one of them."

Goldrick-Rab also wrote that, at Temple, she will have real tenure protections and a faculty union. In addition, she said she is pleased to be going to a university with a strong commitment to serving diverse, low-income students.